I bless Archduke Charles, who will be the future Emperor of Austria and will help lead his countries and peoples to great honor and many blessings — but this will not become obvious until after his death.

“In exile far from the lands, you sojourn, Hope of Austria…”These words, written for His Imperial and Royal Majesty Otto while he was still an exile in Spain, might very well apply to his father the last reigning Emperor-King, Karl of Austria. His body still sojourns on the isle of Madeira, the final shores of his exile. It might seem strange to connect Hope with his long suffering, his earthly failure as the powers in the world dethroned him, his young death after an excruciating illness. And yet his suffering was not in vain, rather, it was the beginning of something greater, something we now may not see the end of in our earthly lives.

Being a son of the nation, being the supporter of liberty, and being subject to Austria, I am faithfully committed to the constitutional Emperor of the Empire and its Kings, and I long for a great, free Austria. The [Revolutionary] Hungarian Government, as it is evident, would not like to agree on this; they insist on their separatist moves, which means they struggle to dismantle our Empire. It is the command of our duty and honour to go till the ultimate and to call for arms against them. And we, not sparing our wealth, blood and life, will stand for our rightful demands and sacred deeds.

-Josip Jelačić, Ban of the Kingdom of Croatia, Count von Bužim, Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa

The second cardinal tragedy [of the Great War] was the complete break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the treaties of St. Germain and Trianon. For centuries this surviving embodiment of the Holy Roman Empire had afforded a common life, with advantages in trade and security, to a large number of peoples none of whom in our own times had the strength or vitality to stand by themselves in the face of pressure from a revivified Germany or Russia. There is not one of these peoples or provinces that constituted the Empire of the Hapsburgs to whom gaining their independence has not brought the tortures which ancient poets and theologians had reserved for the damned.